I was a radio DJ in college. WHRW (It’s W east of the Mississippi River and K west of it), was, and still is, the entirely student-operated station for Binghamton University. When I was there the broadcast radius barely covered campus, I don’t know if that’s changed now.

I had to take an FCC test as a radio operator, after apprenticing with another DJ, in this case my friend Tim Lock. If I remember correctly there were different “divisions“In the station: folk, jazz, rock, classical(?) and Tim was a member of the folk division. We mostly play folk and alternative folk, but we could do almost whatever we wanted.  The music library was a holy place. Of course now that all of our fancy smart-machines have infinite Spotify streams, we all have the equivalent on floor to ceiling rooms of vinyl records, but in 1991, it was a treasure trove. No-one in the world thinks my music taste or knowledge are exceptional, and they are right, a library is a library, and that made me feel at home. Popping over to the station between classes, browsing the stacks, and finding a record player and headphones to discover something new was as much a part of my education as many classes. I hope they still have all those records. It was just moving to more and more CDs during my days in the early 90’s. 

Bill Church and I had a show our senior year. It was terrible. It was at 7am or something. We’d rotate: me one week, him the next, then the both of us doing bad morning drive time over 60’s folk. If I still have a tape, I’m glad I no longer have a cassette player. 

The thing I really remember from doing radio was how my voice changed. The first time Tim left me alone for an hour while I was training, I dropped into the classic public radio voice. I don’t know why. No one I’d heard on the radio at Binghamton talked like that, ever. But something in me started with an incredibly quiet crisp voice like I was introducing the classical hits for grandma. Some combination of fear and propriety happened, and it just came out, like when Ross Geller taught with a British accent. Over time, my natural voice came back, as I got less freaked out by the idea that four or seven people might be listening.